Interview: ‘Now You See Me’ star Jesse Eisenberg

The acclaimed actor discusses his magic-themed ensemble comedy.

Still several months shy of 30, actor Jesse Eisenberg has already assembled a filmography worthy of many industry veterans. In addition to working with a who’s who of contemporary American filmmakers (Woody Allen, Noah Baumbach, David Fincher, Greg Mottola, Kelly Reichardt), the indie stalwart has dipped his toe into the mainstream with consistently respectable results, a trend that continues with this week’s Now You See Me. Featuring a star-studded cast—including Michael Caine, Isla Fisher, Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson, Mélanie Laurent, and Mark Ruffalo—this lively, inventive comedy revolves around a team of magicians who use the tricks of their trade to rob banks and deceive the FBI. On Wednesday afternoon, we sat down with Eisenberg to discuss the art of magic, acting, and picking worthwhile projects. -- Jonathan Doyle

A rare opportunity
“You can imagine the script is really great and the director (Clash of the Titans’ Louis Leterrier) is really great because it attracted such a wonderful cast, so even though the movie has this complicated plot and it seems kind of stylized, it still offered actors fun things to do. It offered actors the opportunity to play different roles, to play in an ensemble that was great. These kinds of things are rare because a lot of times the thing that attracts a cast like this is really intimate character dramas and those are great too, but they don’t offer you the opportunity to do the stuff you get to do in this like play the greatest magician in the world performing in arenas on stage. These are all really fun things that you don’t get the opportunity to do in kitchen sink type dramas.”

Credible magic
“The rubric for this movie was that all the magic we do is magic that will be possible in the next five years. A good example of that is when I perform with my partner Isla Fisher, I create these big bubbles that she steps into and flies throughout the audience. When I read that scene, I thought, ‘This is impossible. This is just a movie trick.’ Then I talked to a lot of magic consultants on the movie and they said, ‘No, this is actually technology that is currently being developed and that people are hoping to do in the next few years.’ They will have these bubbles that are strong enough and to have it work so that somebody can go in a bubble and—whether they’re suspended on wires or not—actually kind of float through an audience. All the stuff we did in this movie is stuff that can actually be done. To me, that’s the most impressive accomplishment of the magic in the movie because it seems like it could just rely on magic effects, but it doesn’t.”

Becoming a magician
“I had about four weeks before we started filming to learn as much as I could, not only about magic, but actually learn sleight of hand and physically practice it. Over the course of shooting, I had about four months to perfect tricks I knew we’d be shooting at the end of the schedule. Towards the end of the shooting schedule, I knew there would be a scene that takes place at the beginning of the movie where I have to perform a card trick. I had about five months to learn that, which is still not enough—even though it seems like a lot of time—because my character is somebody that would have been practicing for 25 years to get as good as he is. For some of the more complicated tricks, they would bring in outside magicians and they would superimpose their hands on my body.”

Learning from the best
“The magic consultants on the movie have an incentive for me to look like I’m a responsible magician. It’s good for them personally as the magic consultants, but also for the industry in general. They had an incentive to teach me as much as possible and I had an incentive to learn as much as possible. If you learn a dozen basic principals of magic, you can start to extrapolate how most things are done. After the movie finished, I went to see David Copperfield and I was watching tricks that months ago I would have had no idea how they were done, but knowing 10 or 12 of the basic principals of magic, you can kind of figure out how most of his incredible illusions are formed.”

Practice makes perfect
“The main thing I learned about magic is that knowing how something is done is so far down the list of important things. The main thing is practicing. I would say knowing how a trick is done is two percent of the trick and 98 percent of the trick is practicing it. I would learn how to do these card tricks, but having only five months to practice them was not nearly enough time.”

The magic of acting
“I went to acting school, I read all the acting books, but there’s nothing to prepare you for acting like acting. I read books by all the great acting teachers and they’re almost not at all helpful when it comes to actually doing it. It’s like any other kind of skill set. You have to practice it in order to do it. I just finished doing a play in New York City and I’ve been acting since I was young, but I could feel over the course of doing this play night after night after night for five months, me getting better, not just in the play and not just in that role, but as an actor in general. It’s just the nature of doing anything. You get better as you do it.”

The smartest guy in the room
“This character actually believes he’s the smartest guy in the room. I’ve played characters that say stuff like that, but it comes from a more insecure place of showing people up to mask what is ultimately a deep insecurity, whereas this character actually believes he is and kind of revels in feeling like he’s the best. I think that comes from practicing something so much that you just kind of trick yourself into thinking that you are the best. If you’re playing a character that’s bright, the way they feel about their intelligence is the thing that’s most interesting.”

Becoming your character
“When I’m acting in this role, I can trick myself into thinking I’m this great and then it works. The most explicit example I have of that is when I did this movie lat year called The Double, which is a doppelganger story. So one character is this meek businessman who feels terrible about himself and feels like he’s imposing himself on everybody in the world just by breathing the same air as them. The other character is this brash confident guy who takes and takes. When I was playing the first kind of meek character, I’d feel bad about what I’d done as an actor that day. I’d feel like I was not good in the scenes. When I was playing the other character, I felt like what I was doing was great. I didn’t want to do a second take because I thought the first take was perfect. You kind of realize whatever you’re playing seeps into how you’re feeling about yourself.”

The problem of likability
“The first movie I did was called Roger Dodger and the main character was played by Campbell Scott. He was playing a character that was kind of despicable. He was a chauvinist, an awful family member—he played my uncle in the movie—and when I was working with him I realized that this is a really fascinating thing he’s doing as an actor and so much more fascinating than the things you see in 99 percent of movies where the main character is kind of universally acceptable and likable and sweet. The most interesting part of it was when we were filming the second to last scene of the movie. He has a line where he says something that kind of reveals his innate sweetness or something and he refused to say the line and I’m thinking, ‘Why? That’s such a great line.’ I was 18 years old. I thought, ‘This is such a great line and it reveals that you’re ultimately a sweet, good person.’ He refused to say the line and the character’s so much more interesting for it because it’s authentic.”

Quality control
“Whatever the worst thing is that’s playing right now, there are 99 scripts that are worse than that with a similar kind of plot line. You think, ‘How could so many bad movies come out in theatres?’ The real shocking thing is all the movies that are not even being made because they’re so bad. The cream of the crop are the ones that come out and a lot of them are bad too. I get sent everything. You can tell on page one when it says, ‘Jessica walks out. She’s got legs up to her ears.’ You know, you just put that down. Use it for firewood or something. Those tend to not get made anyway because if I don’t like it, chances are a lot of other actors won’t like it and they just kind of have a difficult time getting off the ground.”